On a recent Friday night, the crowd waiting to get into the Liberty Hotel
(215 Charles Street, Boston, 617.224.4000) was about 30 well-dressed
people deep. Inside, diners, drinkers, revelers, and presumably some
actual hotel guests swarmed the lobby. It was a typical weekend night
at the Liberty, the holding-cell-turned-hotspot that emerged on the
local nightlife map just over a year ago. And the momentum doesn’t
appear to be slowing down.

The idea of hotel bars used to conjure up two
starkly different — yet similarly unsexy — images. Images, on the one
hand, of dark rooms awash in mahogany and filled with a sea of suits
and power politicians drinking $20 martinis; images synonymous